My reasons for diversifying income are simple: I want to be able to quit my day job eventually. But your reasons may be different, maybe your job isn’t that secure or your co-workers are starting to feel the pressure. It really doesn’t matter why you diversify your sources of income, what matters is that you do it. Making money won’t happen overnight with second sources of income so if you wait until it’s too late you’ll be screwed.
Andrew Rafal, Founder and President of Bayntree Wealth Advisors in Arizona, recently told me about his push to get clients to diversify their income streams. The Great Recession feels like an eternity ago now that the economy is looking up, he says. The job market is strong and consumer confidence is through the roof. As a result, it’s possible people are getting a little too comfortable.
E-Commerce is growing on a huge scale globally, including India. It can be a source of your second income and you can earn lakhs of money on monthly basis. You don’t need a big amount of investment to start your E-commerce business. You can create your own eCommerce website without any hassles, or you can also hire a professional to create your website. Once a website is set up, invest a bit in digital marketing of your website and its products/services and you are all set! E-Commerce business can provide you with a source of income on regular basis without much effort. You do not need to set up a physical office or hire hundreds of employees unless you want to be the next Flipkart. Even a small eCommerce business can fetch decent monthly earnings without much spending or hassles.

Education is one sector which is totally immune from recession. I wrote an article on education sector Education – Problem or Solution There are many opportunities in education sector to earn Second Income. You can work part time or during weekends. Like foreign countries, in India also there is a demand for online tutors. You can earn handsomely as an online Tutor.

What I find most interesting is the fact that I had never considered options like LendingTree or realityshares for other income sources. Investing in property has been too much of bad luck for people that I know personally, so I am interesting in getting involved in a situation where I would have to be dealing with maintenance issues or tenants. There are services for you to do that, but I had not come across any that didn’t eat most if not all of the earnings. Then again, I live in the NY area. Investing in the midwest would not be reasonably possible for me, directly, but reading about realityshares is something I am going to look into further. That might be a real possibility.

This can be a little easier said than done, but if you have a large social media following, you can definitely earn money promoting a product or advertising for a company. You can even combine this with different marketing campaigns if you are an influencer and have your own blog (advertisement + affiliate income). This is how many bloggers make money! Again, it is not 100% passive but once set up correctly and then scaled, can be surprisingly lucrative.
Example. Jean Blanc, a citizen and resident of Canada, is employed as a professional hockey player by a U.S. hockey club. Under Jean's contract, he received $150,000 for 242 days of play during the year. This includes days spent at pre-season training camp, days during the regular season, and playoff game days. Of the 242 days, 194 days were spent performing services in the United States and 48 days performing services in Canada. The amount of U.S. source income is $120,248 ((194 ÷ 242) × $150,000).
Investment in real estate can also be a source of a second income. If you have a decent sum of money lying around, you can use it to invest it to buy your second home. You may even take a home loan to finance your second home. This can become a source of income for you when you rent it to someone. These monthly rents would become your secondary monthly income. The key to making more money with rental properties lies in buying smart. Not all kind of property is going to give you a good return. Hence, analyzing the potential real estate opportunities is very important. The monthly rent highly depends on the area/location of the property hence it is highly important that you select the location of your property very wisely, keeping in mind the rent factor. You can save much even after your home loan EMIs. In addition to this, you can also avail tax exemption on the purchase of your property if it is through a home loan.
The biggest surprise is real estate being second to last on my Passive Income Ranking List because I’ve written that real estate is my favorite investment class to build wealth. Physical real estate doesn’t stack up well against the other passive income sources due to the lack of liquidity and constant maintenance of tenants and property. The returns can be huge due to rising rental income AND principal over time, much like dividend investing. If you are a “proactive passive income earner” like myself, then real estate is great.
Are you sitting at home and wondering how you can bring a little bit more money into your home? Well, you can keep a steady stream of reliable income flowing in with multiple streams of income. It’s not hard to do, and just one idea can spark other income potential and generate multiple steams of income. Diversifying your income is a great way to be able to set a little bit aside for a rainy day.
Investment in real estate can also be a source of a second income. If you have a decent sum of money lying around, you can use it to invest it to buy your second home. You may even take a home loan to finance your second home. This can become a source of income for you when you rent it to someone. These monthly rents would become your secondary monthly income. The key to making more money with rental properties lies in buying smart. Not all kind of property is going to give you a good return. Hence, analyzing the potential real estate opportunities is very important. The monthly rent highly depends on the area/location of the property hence it is highly important that you select the location of your property very wisely, keeping in mind the rent factor. You can save much even after your home loan EMIs. In addition to this, you can also avail tax exemption on the purchase of your property if it is through a home loan.
My favorite type of semi-passive income was rental property because it was a tangible asset that provided reliable income. As I grew older, my interest in rental property waned because I no longer had the patience and time to deal with maintenance issues and tenants. Online real estate became more attractive, along with tax-free municipal-bond income once rates started to rise.
If you watched the video, he goes into a discussion about shocks (about 8 minutes in) like bad investments but how they don't really matter as much if r (rate of return) is greater than g, the rate of economic growth. If r = 5% and g = 1%, then you can lose 80% (the difference) and still be ahead because the return on the remaining 20% has paced with economic growth.
Investing is arguably the easiest way to make passive income. The problem is most investments sound good in theory but don’t work out so well in practice. And if you don’t have much experience or access to capital, let alone the time to work it all out, it can seem more or less impossible. However, there is one smart way to invest that just might work. Continue reading >
Some good writing here! I am a realtor myself and frequently get in touch with clients that consider buying a realty estate a conservative of investing. I once heard of a transport company in Vienna, Austria, which focused their entire profit on buying eventually every house available in the downtown for about 80 years. That must be some of a passive income!
The one thing I learned though from all those childhood experiences though is that you never can depend on one source of income. Eventually my mom caught on and stopped giving me all those extra bags of chips and I had to figure out a new way to make money. No matter how safe something seems there’s always the chance that you could lose that income and be stuck with nothing.
Here’s the truth: a successful business is something that successfully solves a problem. And that business can make more money in two ways: solving more people’s problems, or solving bigger problems. The cool thing about the EP Model is that sometimes these products don’t even have to be yours. You can generate income by recommending other people’s or companies’ services or products. This is called affiliate marketing. It’s actually how I’ve made most of my money since I started in 2008.
So many great tips in this big post, thanks! I think it’s so true that people should focus on the things they do well at and are interested in. And yes save, save, save in the beginning and throughout. I have several interest and dividend earning investments and am looking to expand further. Diversification is a great goal for all of us so we can avoid having all our eggs in one basket.
If you want to top up your income without taking on a strenuous second job, your first port of call should be your very own skillset. If you have a natural talent that could help others, you have an instant “in” to easy money. Whether you’re a gifted guitarist, mathematical genius or speak a second language, almost any talent can be turned into cash. Offering one-to-one coaching is a flexible way to make a solid hourly rate, and enables you to take on as much or as little work as you wish. Find local clients by placing adverts in the library, schools and community bulletin boards and share your talent in exchange for a fee.
What I did: I first identified my favorite places in the world to live: San Francisco, Honolulu, Paris, Amsterdam, New York City, and Lake Tahoe. I then looked up the median rent and housing prices for each city. Then I factored in private education costs for two kids to be conservative given I may not have two kids and public schools are often good enough. After calculating all vital costs, I then did a self-assessment of how happy I was making $50,000, $100,000, $150,000, $200,000, $250,000, $350,000, $500,000, and $750,000. I decided working 20 hours a week making $200,000 a year is the best income balance for maximum happiness.

Stocks (shares) paying dividends are typically a reliable source of income but they have higher risk of capital losses than cash and bonds. So, it’s wise not to chase yield indiscriminately. The 10 highest yielding stocks on the ASX 200 (the 200 largest companies in Australia) are shown in the table below. But their share price performance on average over the last year has been underwhelming, as shown in the far right column: